Since 1865, lectores in Cuban factories have read to the workers while they roll cigars. They read the news, novels, horoscopes, and recipes. While essentially performing in-house broadcasts, the lectores have been their informal teachers.
“Far from being laborers starved of culture, cigar rollers had the opportunity to examine new ideas, remain informed, and gain perspective through interpretation of classic literature.”
Masha Ivashintsova was born in Russia in 1942. When the Leningrad native passed away in 2000, they left behind over 30,000 photographs that had never been seen by anyone.
As Ivashintsova’s daughter explains:
My mother, Masha Ivashintsova, was heavily engaged in the Leningrad poetic and photography underground movement of the 1960−80s. She was a lover of three geniuses of the time: Photographer Boris Smelov, Poet Viktor Krivulin and Linguist Melvar Melkumyan, who is also my father. Her love for these three men, who could not be more different, defined her life, consumed her fully, but also tore her apart. She sincerely believed that she paled next to them and consequently never showed her photography works, her diaries and poetry to anyone during her life. As she put herself in her diary:
“I loved without memory: is that not an epigraph to the book, which does not exist? I never had a memory for myself, but always for others.”
